Tracks for toy cars and other vehicles may be used to set up play towns, cities, highways, race courses, and other play settings for the vehicles, such as to provide entertainment and challenges to players. Some tracks may be arranged in a closed circuit, such as to form a race course for the vehicles to repeatedly traverse. Such track setups may include features to track the number of laps traversed by a toy vehicle, for example, by incrementing a displayed lap count in response to a mechanical switch triggered by a toy vehicle traveling over a specially configured section of track. However, such track setups are limited in terms of the ability of the track components to distinguish among a plurality of toy vehicles that may be traversing a track.
Examples of toy cars and tracks for use therewith are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,572,711, 4,330,127, 4,364,566, 5,125,010, 6,089,951, and 6,109,186. Examples of systems of recording race objects in various settings are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,531,118, 3,946,312, 5,173,856, 5,194,843, 5,420,903, 5,970,882, and 6,192,099. All of the aforementioned disclosures are incorporated by reference in their entirety for all purposes.